Packaged-ice, such as different weights of bagged ice has been popular to be used in portable coolers to chill canned and bottled beverages. Packaged-ice has generally become standardized over the past decades with a few popular sizes in the U.S. and around the world dominating the sales. For example, the 10 lb bag of packaged-ice is the most popular retail version of packaged-ice in the U.S., followed in descending popularity by 20 lb, 8 lb, 7 lb and 5 lb bags of packaged-ice.
In Canada, the United Kingdom (UK), and other European countries, other standard sizes such as but not limited to 6 lb (2.7 kg), and 26.5 lb (12 kg) are also very popular forms of packaged-ice.
The bags of packaged-ice generally comprise loose ice cubes, chips and the like, that are frozen fresh water. The standard use of the bags of ice is having the consumer place the bag(s) loosely in cooler containers, and then adding canned and/or bottled beverages, such as sodas, waters to the coolers containing the packaged-ice.
Due to the melting properties of the fresh-water ice, canned and bottled beverages placed in ice cannot be chilled below 32 degrees Fahrenheit for any significant length of time, which is the known general freezing point.
Over the years the addition of ice-melters such as salt have been known to be used to lower the melting point of fresh-water ice. Forms of using salt have included sprinkling loose salt on packed-ice in a cooler to produce lower temperatures for certain canned and bottled beverages placed inside. Sprinkling salt has been tried with beer, since beer will not freeze at 32 degrees due to its alcohol content. However, the use of sprinkling loose salt has problems.
Due to the uneven spread of salt on ice, it is impossible to know or control precisely the resulting temperate below 32 degrees on various ice-cubes in the cooler obtained by sprinkling of salt. Salt sprinkling has inevitably resulted in some of the beverages “freezing hard” while others remain liquid and sometimes at temperatures above 32 degrees. As such, the spreading of salt or other ice-melters on packaged-ice in a cooler to obtain colder temperatures than 32 degrees is an impractical method to know and control precisely the resulting temperature of ice-cubes in a cooler environment.
Some recent trends in custom cold beverage creation at home and at commercial establishments rely on traditional refrigeration and/or placing ice inside the beverage to obtain cold temperatures. At home custom beverage creating devices such as SODASTREAM® by Soda-Club (CO2) Atlantic GmbH, and KEURIG COLD™ by Keurig Green Mountain Inc. each rely on one of these traditional methods for cooling, and each of these devices having significant drawbacks.
Traditional refrigeration offers a relatively slow and inefficient method of cooling, requiring hours to obtain approximately 40 F drinking temperatures.
Placing ice inside a beverage, while providing very rapid cooling and ‘ice-cold’ temperature, has the drawbacks of; 1) watered-down flavoring, 2) introducing impurities, and 3) causing premature de-carbonation of carbonated beverages.
The non-traditional method of cooling canned and bottled beverages rapidly by spinning then on their longitudinal axis while the can or bottle is in contact with ice or ‘ice-cold’ liquid (usually fresh water at or near approximately 32 deg-F) has also been attempted. See for example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,505,054 to Loibl et al. This patent describes a rapid beverage cooling method and device that attempts to reduce beverage cooling times from hours to close to a minute without putting ice in the beverage.
Other devices, such as the SPINCHILL™ device, shown on the web at www.spinchill.com use portable type drills with a suction cup which can attach to one end of a canned beverage and claim ‘cooling times’ of 60 seconds or less for canned beverages spun at roughly 450 rpm in a standard ice-cooler containing ice and/or iced-water, though the term ‘cooling’ is used loosely and generally describes a beverage temperature between 40-50 F or thereabouts.
These non-traditional beverage cooling devices mentioned above and their techniques generally spin canned or bottled beverages at a constant rpm (revolutions per minute) rate in one-direction only. These devices generally expose surface are of the can or bottle over and over again to ice or cold liquid in order to rapidly cool the beverage.
These devices also seek to minimize agitation inside the canned or bottled beverage by spinning them at relatively mild rates of 350-500 rpm which, they claim, is optimal for rapid cooling and prevents undesirable foaming of carbonated beverages and beer.
These devices will still require a few to several minutes of spinning in a cooling medium in order to obtain ‘ice-cold’ drinking temperatures for the beverages, and have no automated way of communicating exactly when a beverage has reached its' optimal or lowest drinking temperature.
Moreover, none of these devices seek to maximize heat transfer coefficients (thereby minimizing cooling times) via utilization of 1) Liquid-immersion, 2) Turbulent fluid flow within the beverage container, and 3) Turbulent fluid-flow within the cooling medium.
It has been known for many years that alcoholic and non-alcoholic bottled and canned beverages of all varieties, including bottled water, can be super cooled below 32 deg-F while remaining liquid for short periods of time. What is not generally known is how to cool these beverages rapidly to precise super cooled temperatures which allow for enjoyable ‘slush-on-demand’ drinking experiences while preventing unwanted or premature freezing which can result in undesirable effects such as 1) premature foaming or release of carbonation in an undesirable way, and 2) hard frozen or ‘chunky’ frozen beverages which are difficult to consume.
In addition, the prior art generally does not have ability to supercool beverages below 32-degrees and/or below their own freezing point while keeping them in a liquid state to allow for previously impossible beverage options, such as creating instant milkshakes from super cooled milk beverages and creating instant smoothies from super cooled fruit and vegetable juices without the need to blend-in chopped-ice into the smoothie.
Thus, the need exists for solutions to the above problems with the prior art.